Davblog

In which someone you've never heard of writes about things you have no interest in

Posts Tagged ‘demonstration’

Stop The War Demo

I could tell that this was going to be different when I arrived at Balham tube station. There were three times the number of people on the platform than you’d normally expect on a Saturday lunchtime. By the time we changed tubes at Kennington the must have been two hundred of us. When I got off at Embankment I was immediately engulfed in a sea of humanity.

The whole day was amazing. It took five hours to walk from Embankment to Hyde Park. The atmosphere on the march was incredible. I think that everyone was stunned by the numbers taking part. Of course, being in the crowd, it’s impossible to get a real feel for the size – but there were people as far as I could see in every direction. When I got to Hyde Park Corner, it was possible to look back along the length of Piccadilly where I could still see people in Piccadilly Circus.

It was just the numbers, but also the range of types of people that was impressive. Of course the usual “professional protesters” were there, but their numbers were completely dwarfed by the incredible numbers of “normal” people who had finally decided they needed to make their feelings known.

I was far too late for most of the speakers at the rally. I think that Bianca Jagger was just finishing as I arrived. Then Ken Livingstone spoke his usual sense and he was followed by Jesse Jackson who tried to turn the whole thing into an evangelical revival meeting (not sure what the Muslims in the crowd thought about that).

Tessa Jowell was right about the grass in Hyde Park though. It’s completely buggered now. I saw two aging hippies imploring the masses to keep to the paths and respect the gardens. They were completely ignored.

As I walked back to Victoria station I passed a number of the coaches that were going to take the protesters home. At least three of them had signs in the window declaring that they were transport for the “war rally”. Which I thought missed the point in a spectacular way.

I’ve put my photos of the day online.

Anti-War Demo

If you don’t know that there’s an Anti-War Demo on Saturday then you must be living on another planet.

From what I’m seeing the number of people who are planning to go on this demo is huge. When I was a student, I was surrounded by people who thought like me and we’d all go off on demos together. Since then I seem to know less and less people who would see spending an afternoon marching through London as a useful way to spend their time. I’ve become used to people looking at me slightly strangely when I say I’m going on a demo.

But this this time it’s different. Everyone that I talk to is planning to go along. Even people who have never been on a demo in their life are considering going along. This march isn’t just going to be people selling Socialist Worker or career lefties. It will be people from all sections of British society. I really think that the government is going to be taken aback by the breadth of support that the anti-war movement has. Blair is wrong to support Bush. Only a very small number of people can’t see this.

Is strongly suspect that this could be the largest demo that London has ever seen.

Please come along and help prove me right.

Crowds

I spent a large part of the 1980s on political demonstrations where the size of the crowd was consistently underestimated in the media. “The size of the crowd at the CND demonstration was estimated at 250,000 by the organisers – official police figures put the number at two dozen”.

It’s therefore very tempting to see the estimates of the numbers on yesterday’s Countryside Alliance march as being doctored in the opposite direction. The papers are saying over 400,000 people marched.

But I wasn’t there and I therefore have no way to make my own estimate, so I’m just going to have to accept the published figures. I’m not going to lower myself to using the same tactics that were used against me twenty years ago.

The Countryside Alliance

In the UK we have an organisation called the Countryside Alliance. It’s a group of country-dwellers who want us townies to stay out of their lives and let them carry on living the way they have for thousands of years. Actually, it’s just a front for a bunch of murderous thugs whose idea of a good time is chasing a fox for miles and then letting a pack of dogs rip it to shreds.

They’re currently very angry because the government has quite rightly decided that this practice is barbaric and is moving to make it illegal. They’re so incensed that they’ll all getting on their horses and their tractors and coming up to London this weekend to tell us just how bloody annoyed they are.

This leaves me with a dilemma. On Sunday, do I go up to Embankment and shout “GET ORF MOY LAND” at them all or do I go and visit the countryside – which will be a far more pleasant place without all the bloody yokels.